The Accidental Virgin (19 page)

Saturday night — still

A
s soon as she hit the pavement outside, a giant stretch limo — as black as Stacy’s mood — pulled up to the curb of the SoHo Grand Hotel. A dozen passers-by stopped to check it out. Stacy joined them. Her night was ruined, but if she could catch a glimpse of, say, Madonna, she’d feel a little bit better.

The door opened. A woman’s leg appeared. This was some leg, long, muscular, shimmering in black sheer stockings. A glamorous leg. Belonging to someone famous and beautiful. The crowd pressed closer to the limo. The second leg emerged. Stacy was sure she recognized the spike of that patent leather heel. Before she could flee, the remainder of Fiona Chardonnay’s body emerged.

“Stacy Temple!” Fiona called. “I thought I saw you standing there.”

The crowd of people stared at the 57-year-old bombshell, elegant tonight in a black, off-the-shoulder Prada ankle-length dress and great chunks of diamond jewelry. She must have come from a benefit to be dressed so conservatively, thought Stacy. Her brain screaming, “Run away! Run away!” Stacy knew full well that she would have to stand her ground and have a conversation. The first question from Fiona would be What are you doing here and why aren’t you with Jorge? — a query Stacy was in no mood to answer.

Fiona closed the limo door, strode over to her underling, and asked, “How do I look?”

Stacy could address that topic easily. “You’re radiant, glimmering, a showstopper, a jaw dropper —”

“That’s enough,” said Fiona. “What are you doing here?”

No use lying. Stacy got to the meat of it: “I came here to pick up a man, but instead, I was mentally fucked by a couple of rude and imperious movie stars,” she said. “I’d already blown it with another guy earlier tonight by frying my eyebrows, after which point I found out that Stanley Bombicci is using my name and likeness on line as a masturbatory aid for millions of his horny subscribers. I didn’t call Jorge because, no matter how much you think I’m like you, I simply couldn’t live with myself if I paid for sex. What’s more, in half a day, I will be a virgin again. I’ll be fresh and innocent as a baby lamb, and just as prime for slaughter.”

Fiona looked at Stacy as if she’d vomited on the sidewalk. “I disgust you?” asked Stacy. “I seem to have that effect on just about everyone I meet these days.”

A man in a black tuxedo appeared at Fiona’s side. His face was familiar to Stacy. She wasn’t sure how. He was around 45, with soft, round cheeks in need of a shave, olive skin, curly black hair, oval-shaped eyeglasses perched on a two-sizes-too-big nose. He put his arm around Fiona’s waist and said, “Ready to go inside?”

Fiona said, “Stacy Temple, this is Randy Gestalt.”

The name jogged her memory. Randy Gestalt, the president and CEO of Mercury Matrix. He’d been on the cover of
Fast Company
magazine a couple months ago. Among the youngest billionaires in America, he’d made a dozen king’s fortunes the old-fashioned way: He bought failing companies for a song, dismantled or artificially bolstered them, and then sold them to other companies for a profit. One would think selling loser companies would be a recipe for financial disaster, but there was always some megacorporation (AOL and CBS, for example) that would jump at the chance to absorb a sick company, assuming they could ignite new life with their magic breath. More often than not, the small company died its natural death anyway. Meanwhile, the megacorp was rewarded for its purchase with tax breaks and good press (after all, if it weren’t for the megacorp, the staff of loser.com would have been out of work months before). Mercury Matrix made its millions one dead dot-com at a time. The kicker: Randy Gestalt was beloved by the Internet community. He wasn’t viewed as the man who swooped down like a vulture to pick the bones. He was seen as a white knight, the man who would ride in with the sunset and secure a new home for the impoverished orphan company, or broker a deal with banks and creditors to make sure the staff entered unemployment with
something,
even if that meant ten cents for every dollar of back pay owed to them.

Fiona and Randy
together
could mean only one thing. Stacy said, “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gestalt.”

“And you. Fiona?” He gestured for her to hurry along, they had to get inside before spontaneously combusting.

Fiona said, “You go ahead. I need to speak to Stacy.” She kissed him on the lips — a wet one. He didn’t budge — not a man to take orders or be dismissed so cursorily by a…well, what was Fiona to him anyway?

Stacy’s boss said, “Just five minutes, please, Randy.” He squinted at Stacy, perturbed that a girl with visible tummy (an insect, a plebe) could distract Fiona’s attention from him.

He said, “I don’t like to walk into a restaurant alone, and we’re late. Let’s go.”

Fiona — not a woman to take orders from any man, regardless of the relationship — said, “Stacy, walk with us.”

Randy took Fiona’s arm. Fiona took Stacy’s arm, and the three of them entered the hotel. Mercifully, they skirted the bar and went straight back to the hotel’s restaurant. The Grand Café was famous for three things: 1) celebrity sightings, 2) mahogany (the wood of the moment) interiors, and 3) Duck Wellington, a lethal combination of brandy sauce, roast canard, sautéed mushrooms, and whisper-thin pastry.

Apparently, Randy Gestalt meant exactly what he’d said. As soon as they had made an entrance, Gestalt waved at some other men in tuxedos and walked across the room to speak to them. Fiona and Stacy were left at the maitre d’ stand to talk.

Stacy started in. “No need to pretend. You plus Randy Gestalt equals the end of thongs.com. Will the staff get anything from a sale?”

Fiona said, “No. But I’ll get fifty percent of my shares at sixty percent of their current worth. Janice will get twenty-five percent of her shares at thirty percent of their worth. The staff will get COBRA insurance options and one week’s severance.”

“What about Stanley?”

Fiona said, “He never finalized.”

“The banks?”

“Happy to take what they can get from the sale and potential resale.”

“The vendors?” Including Harry Watuba of Bolt Fabrics, who would be chanting a curse in her name from now until solvency.

“Not sure about them,” said Fiona. “Randy has a formula for who will get what, and when.”

“My stock?” asked Stacy.

“What you have vested will lose its value when we make the sale public,” said Fiona.

“My options?”

“No longer exist.”

“Can you postpone the announcement until Monday afternoon so I can sell my shares in the morning?” asked Stacy.

Fiona shook her head. “That would be insider trading, Stacy. Besides, my showing up here with Randy tonight is the equivalent of taking out a full page ad in the
Wall Street Journal
.”

Stacy had to ask, “If I hadn’t run into you tonight, would you have called to tell me or would I have had to find out like everyone else?”

Behind the two women, a party of ten or twelve diners waited for their table. Their laughter and loud clothing offended Stacy’s ears and eyes. Fiona barely noticed them. She’d been staring at Randy, still across the room, shaking hands and slapping backs, for the length of their conversation. Finally, Fiona said, “So you didn’t call Jorge.”

“I called,” said Stacy. “And hung up.”

“I never really expected you to do it,” she said, holding up an index finger to Randy (international sign language for “one minute”), who was beckoning her to join him. “I’m going to say something that will shock and amaze you,” Fiona started.

“Something
else
?” asked Stacy.

“Randy and I are engaged.”

This wasn’t quite as shocking and amazing to Stacy as the other news (that she was out of a job with nothing to show for it as of ten seconds ago, that Fiona was willingly, remorselessly, screwing over the entire staff, and everyone else who’d dare to do business with thongs.com, simply to save the thin and crispy skin on her own bony back).

Fiona stared at her former underling with a smile and arched eyebrows. “I’m so happy for you,” said Stacy.

“It’s not love,” said Fiona.

“It couldn’t be that,” agreed Stacy.

“I told you my next move would be a biggie.”

“You’ve known him for while?” asked Stacy. Like that mattered.

Fiona nodded. “A couple years. When Stanley started waffling a couple of days ago, I called Randy. I never completely let Janice or anyone know how bad things were financially. Our accountant knew, of course. She’s the one who begged me to call Randy and do something fast. At that point, there was still hope of finding a buyer. Randy and I met. We talked. Made some tough decisions.”
Some tender ones, too, apparently,
thought Stacy. “And here we are.”

The party behind them was growing restless waiting for a table. Randy was now peevishly waving Fiona over to him. “I’m going home,” said Stacy. “Best of luck to you, Fiona. You’ve taught me a lot.” About how what she didn’t want to be.

Fiona kissed her gently — more gently than Stacy would have thought possible — and said, “I’ll be in touch.”

It was a promise, a threat, a little of both. Stacy said, “I’m cashing the check for two thousand.”

“I wish it’d been more,” said Fiona, and then slinked toward her intended, her mind-bendingly high heels leaving tiny puncture dots on the mahogany floors.

Stacy’s apartment never looked so good; she was glad to be home. It’d been a horrible night. Possibly the worst ever. Her quest was over. She’d failed. Her employment was finished. And now she had the ripe opportunity to start fresh in the two major areas of her life.

Deciding to publicly declare her change of philosophy, Stacy turned on her computer to compose an e-mail to Charlie, describing the night’s events and announcing her plans for renewal. She had no clue as to what those plans might be, but sometimes when Stacy’s fingers touched the keyboard, her fingers would type out ideas she never could have come up with had she been lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, fretting.

Once she’d logged on to AOL, she found a few dozen e-mails waiting for her. More than half were match.com hopefuls. She deleted them all. Then she went to the site and deleted her profile.

The only e-mail she opened was from Charlie. He was much better, although the med student he’d hooked up with had been summarily dismissed because, as he wrote, “her lips were too wide, and she had too many teeth. Whenever she went down on me, I got scared.” Along with his confessions, he’d pasted a link to the latest posting from Gigi XXX at swerve.com. Reluctantly, Stacy clicked on the link, and beheld the same photo of Gigi’s lithe body bending over a bed.

Column title: Seduced and Betrayed.

Already a winner, thought Stacy, as she scanned down to read the text. It started:

Stacy read the column again from the top. Any rancor she’d held for Gigi was gone.
That poor woman,
she thought. At least in her unaffiliated state Stacy had been spared the pain of a bad breakup. But she hadn’t been blinded by love, either.